Philippines tops for SMS usage in 2014

The Philippines remains at the top of the SMS usage ranking for 2014. It temporarily lost top spot to Costa Rica for one year in 2011. Text messaging skyrocketed in Costa Rica following the launch of competition in the mobile market in 2011. Statistics on SMS usage in Costa Rica only became available from the regulator after our 2011 SMS market review was conducted. Similarly, SMS data for New Zealand has only recently become available from that country's Commerce Commission which would rank the nation 7th in 2011. By 2014, Costa Rica had fallen to 10th with growing mobile data usage usurping texting.  Malaysia and Turkey fell out of the top ten in 2014, replaced by France and Argentina. SMS usage remains firm in the US, Canada, Venezuela, Indonesia and Pakistan.

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Top SMS 2009

The Philippines is still on top in the latest ranking of leading SMS countries. There have been some interesting changes since the last benchmark (see 2003 ranking). Text messaging has tripled in the Philippines with a whopping 609 SMS per subscriber per month in 2009. The USA enters the ranking at second with skyrocketing use of text messaging from just 8 per user per month in 2003 to 408 in 2009. This can be attributed to add-on packages for SMS where users get unlimited text messaging for a flat monthly fee. Singapore, Malta, Croatia and Norway have dropped out of the top ten replaced by Venezuela, Lithuania and Portugal. Another drop out is Japan where text messaging has been eclipsed by mobile e-mail. Care must be taken in interpreting these statistics since they may not reflect a relatively high intensity of non-voice use because users are more "tech-savvy".  In many instances, SMS is used because it is a cheaper alternative than a voice call. When the price of voice calls decline, the use of text messaging often goes down.

Top 10 countries by SMS per user per month, 2009

Note: Philippines and Indonesia based on largest mobile operators. USA refers to H2 2009. Ireland refers to Q4 2009. Korea refers to South Korea's KTF at February. SMS per user per month calculated as: Number of SMS for 2009 / Average mobile subscriptions in 2009 / 12. 
Suggested citation: "Top SMS 2009." www.ictDATA.org. IBSN: 000-1-05-2010. http://www.ictdata.org/2010/10/top-sms-2009.html. [Extracted dd-mm-yyyy].
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See 2011 update: http://www.ictdata.org/2012/06/sms-update-2011.html